


Spare Parts

by MsWikit



Series: Spare Parts Universe [1]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Angst, Control Ending, F/M, Rating May Change
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-13
Updated: 2015-03-29
Packaged: 2018-03-01 05:51:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 19,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2762003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MsWikit/pseuds/MsWikit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shepard's clone awakens in a hospital eight months after the end of the Reaper War, and to her surprise everyone seems to think she's Shepard. She feigns amnesia in order to fool people into thinking she's the real deal, and begins to learn what it means to be the real Commander.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Voice

**Author's Note:**

> Slight trigger warning for self-harm and suicidal thoughts/tendencies.

Dragging, scraping. Something tugging at her ankles. Light. Impossibly bright light. Nimble tools piecing her together again. Nerves are replaced with cybernetics. Muscle and bone are mended. Her heart beats like a drum in her ears. Reminding her that she’s alive. Mocking her. There isn’t any pain, but she cries. 

“Let me die!”

A voice that is both familiar and inexplicable speaks, surrounding her, enveloping her. “No; you have yet to live.”

*

She awakens in a hospital. There are tubes sticking in her arms and a hundred machines beeping around her. She tries to move, but her body screams in protest. Her legs are the worst. Wiggling her toes takes an enormous amount of effort. Everything hurts. She leans her head back against the pillow and fights off tears. 

_“Grab my hand!”_

_“And then?”_

_“And then you live!”_

_“For what?”_

Why couldn’t they just let her die? Surely that would have been best; there is only room in the galaxy for one Commander Shepard. She’s learned that much. And if she can’t be Shepard, then what can she be? Just some poor fool that shares the bitch’s DNA. No one cares about her. Not even Maya. Maya, who rescued her, taught her everything, was willing to let her die like a dog. 

Suddenly angry, she grabs the tubes in one of her arms and yanks them out. It takes almost all of her strength. Multiple machines begin to scream in alarm. Her arm is bleeding. She goes to do the other arm. Her head feels light. The door opens suddenly and a team of doctors and nurses rush in. They all freeze when they see her, but she doesn’t hesitate. She pulls out the last of the tubes, relishing in the pain. 

“Commander, don’t!” one of the doctors yells, rushing forward. 

“GET AWAY FROM ME!” she screams.

Two of the nurses – both asari – grab her arms and pin her with surprising strength. Her vision swirls. A salarian comes forward with a syringe and injects something into one of her arms. Ten seconds later, the darkness returns.

*

She wakes slowly. The machines beep in the distance, and she hears voices. 

“She woke up about…eight hours ago,” someone says. “Ripped out her IVs and her sensors, started screaming at the doctors.”

“Is she alright?”

“She’s fine now. They think she was confused; probably still on battle mode.”

“Keep me updated.” 

“Will do.”

The voices go silent, and she hears a soft, exhausted sigh. 

She opens her eyes slowly and sees the room for the first time. There’s a large window on her left. Outside cars fly by, and she can see the Presidium. People have left flowers in her room. Lots and lots of flowers. There are teddy bears and balloons. On her right is a turian, looking at something on a tablet. It takes her a good two minutes to realize that it’s Garrus Vakarian; one of the real Shepard’s friends. 

“Get out,” she hisses. 

Garrus looks up at her, his mandibles flaring ever so slightly in surprise. “You’re awake.”

“What are you doing in here? Get out!” she snaps. Did _she_ send him? Did she post someone in here to tell her when she woke?

He looks troubled. “Shepard, what’s wrong?”

 _Shepard_.

“…Shepard?” she repeats, numbly. 

“Yes,” Garrus says. He gives her a strange look. She finds it difficult to read his expressions; his alien face is nothing like a human’s. 

“I’m Shepard.” The words sound robotic. It reminds her of when Maya was teaching her how to be a person: _You are human. Your name is Shepard._ Back then she’d parroted what she said, not fully understanding it. Now feels much the same.

Garrus leans forward. “Yes, you are; how do you feel?”

He thinks she’s Shepard. _He thinks she’s Shepard_. Suddenly she remembers what one of the doctors yelled when she woke up the first time. 

_“Commander, don’t!”_

Commander. As in, Commander Shepard. 

“I don’t understand,” she says. Her voice cracks. She fights to maintain control of her emotions. The Commander doesn’t cry. That’s what Maya taught her; the Commander is strong, resilient, fully capable of standing alone. But she’s not the Commander, she understands that now. She’s not anything. Why is she alive? “What is going on?”

Garrus frowns. Or she thinks it’s a frown, at least. He grabs her hand. The gesture is extremely familiar, and uncomfortable for her. His skin – if it can be called that – is hard and cool. She flinches away. He gives her another look, tilting his head slightly in confusion. “The Reapers retreated, Shepard; it’s over.”

The Reapers? The war is just…over? “They…retreated?”

“The Crucible did… _something_. Whatever it was, they’re not hostile anymore,” Garrus says. “Well, they haven’t been so far.”

“How long?” she asks.

He hesitates. “…you’ve been in a coma for about eight months.”

Eight months. That doesn’t- that doesn’t make sense. None of this does. How did she get here? How is she alive? What happened to the real Shepard? She starts to tell him. And as soon as she tells him they’ll toss her out. And she can try again. She can make sure no one will find her this time. 

Then, she remembers the voice.

 _“No; you have yet to live.”_

It was so…familiar. But she’d been so incoherent she wonders if she even heard it at all. Perhaps the doctors had been working to put her back together, just as Cerberus had put Shepard back together. Perhaps it was a dream. But she remembers that voice. Full of love and sympathy and warmth. Like a mother’s voice. Like what Maya seemed like when she first woke her up. 

Is it possible that someone actually wants her to live? To try?

She hesitates. Garrus is looking at her expectantly. If she tells him who she actually is, they’ll just cast her out again. But if she tries to pretend to be Shepard, they’ll know. She can never fool her friends. That was the reason Cerberus threw her away; she didn’t have the original Shepard’s memories. …but what if Shepard didn’t have her memories, either?

“Who are you?” she blurts out.

Garrus blinks once, then leans back. “You don’t know who I am?”

“No,” she lies. 

That look passes across his face again- she’s certain it’s a frown now. He gets up. “I…need to go tell your doctors you’re awake.”

With that he walks out. For the ten minutes he’s gone, she doesn’t think he believes her. Somehow he innately knows that she isn’t her. She’s just a copy, made only to provide the real thing with spare parts. There are surgical scars all over her to prove it. She gave the original Shepard a kidney, part of a lung, stem cells, who knows how much blood. She looks at the tubes in her arms and thinks back to her earliest memories. Knives and needles and strange masked faces. 

She shudders. Yep, she’s made up her mind. She fucking hates needles.

Garrus returns with three doctors in tow. One of them is the salarian who sedated her before. He stands in the doorway with an asari – Liara – and they watch as the doctors examine her. Or, rather, bombard her with questions.

“Do you know when you were born?”

“What are your parent’s names?”

“Where were you born?”

“What year is it?”

“When did you join the Alliance?”

She doesn’t have to feign amnesia for most of these questions. Maya never bothered to tell her much about the real Shepard. She doesn’t know when she was born, or where she comes from. All Maya told her was that she was weak. She let aliens dictate what she was supposed to do when her true purpose was to serve humans. Looking back on it, she wonders how much of that was just bullshit. She realizes now that she was only a tool. Something to be used and thrown away. Just like with Cerberus. 

She answers ‘I don’t know’ to every single question, and the doctors look at each other with furrowed brows. Behind them she sees Liara sigh and walk off. Garrus, however, remains. He watches her with what might just be concern. 

“Let’s arrange an MRI,” the asari doctor says, looking to the other two.

“Two of you are aliens,” she says suddenly. Out of the three of them, there’s only one human. “How the hell do you two know if there’s anything wrong with me?”

They seem surprised. The salarian answers, “We’ve trained several years to understand and treat any species that comes through these doors. Don’t worry Commander; we’re certified.”

They leave. As they walk out, the asari doctor stops and asks Garrus something very quietly. He shakes his head. The asari taps something into her tablet, then walks out. He looks towards her. “Do you…um…want me to stay with you? I know you don’t know who I am but-”

“You can go,” she says. 

He nods once, then leaves.

So she sits there alone, listening to the machines beep away. She stares at the window and wonders where the real Shepard is. Did she die stopping the Reapers? Or is she still out there? 

_I don’t care_ , she thinks. _I’m the Commander now. It’s my turn._


	2. Playing Along

“Easy now, yes- that’s it,” the nurse says. She holds Shepard’s arm – it’s strange, thinking of herself as that again – and helps her stand. Her legs shake and tremble beneath her. And there’s pain. A _lot_ of pain. Lying in a bed for eight months doesn’t do much good for the muscles. Her legs are weak, and she still needs to rely on the nurses heavily to do the simplest things. It irritates her. She’s _Commander Shepard_. She shouldn’t require help going to the bathroom.

She holds on to the bars of the walker, using them for support best she can. Her arms are also weak, but getting better. She can lift things that aren’t too heavy and eat on her own well enough. But her hands shake. The doctors aren’t sure why; it could be anything from the severe concussion she sustained to nerve damage to muscle weakness. She leans on the walker, gritting her teeth, trying to remain on her feet for as long as possible. But her legs are on fire. Every part of them from her thighs down to her toes scream for relief.

“You can sit back down, Commander,” the nurse says gently.

“No, I can _do_ this!” Shepard snaps. But moments later her legs make the decision for her. They give out, and the nurse catches her and lowers her back into her seat. She lets out an irritated grunt.

The nurse looks at her sympathetically. She’s one of the asari girls who held her down when she first woke up. Her name is Ceissla or something along those lines; she’s nice, well-meaning. But every time she gives Shepard that sympathetic look she wants to smack her. She’s the Commander, she doesn’t need her pity. “It’s alright you know, Commander; I know it’s frustrating, but it will take time.”

Shepard says nothing. Being this helpless reminds her of when Maya first woke her. She was practically an infant; she didn’t know how to stand, or walk, or talk. Her skin was smooth and too soft. That first few months were full of Maya doing things like this to her; helping her stand, and walk. Teaching her how to grab things with her hands. It’s not a state she likes to remember, especially not now. She feels helpless. Once again at the mercy of strangers. “How long will it take?”

Ceissla hesitates. “It could take several months, Commander. Maybe even longer.”

She frowns, and tries to stand. She gets about half-way up on her own, but her legs give out again. Shepard falls back into her seat. 

“I think you’ve done enough for today,” Ceissla says gently. She brings Shepard’s wheelchair over and helps her into it. She can’t help but feel defeated as she’s wheeled back towards her room. Ceissla helps her into her bed and leaves. It’s a relief to be alone. Her muscles are sore from physical therapy, and she’s exhausted. Mere minutes after being returned to her room, Shepard is asleep. She dreams of the Voice, warm and familiar and all around her. 

When she wakes up, Garrus is just outside talking with one of her doctors. She can’t hear what they’re saying, but the doctor nods in agreement. Moments later, he walks in. It’s been about a week since she awoke, and she’s seen Garrus come in and out. But he’s kept his distance so far. It seems that’s over, unfortunately.

“Shepard,” he says, hovering in the doorway. “Is now a good time?”

Guess she can’t delay it any further. “I suppose.”

He walks in and sits down. Without waiting, he dives right in. “Now I know you don’t remember me, but the doctors think being around familiar people will help your memory. Is there anything that you can remember? Anything at all?”

“I- remember the Reapers,” Shepard says slowly, carefully. She’s walking on thin ice. One wrong word and she could reveal too much, but she has to give him something. 

“Do you remember Eden Prime?” he asks, jumping on the subject. “Er, either time.”

She shakes her head. There’s disappointment in his eyes. Not for the first time, she wonders why he’s here. Obviously he believes she’s Shepard. But why is he the only one who elected to sit and wait for her to awaken? Liara seems to be in and out of the hospital, never staying for more than an hour or two at a time. But Garrus, she thinks, is always here.

“Do you remember Saren? Or- when we met, maybe?” Garrus persists. There’s something in his voice that Shepard can’t read. Turians have this entire weird sub-vocal level that she can’t even begin to understand. Shepard can barely figure out humans as it is. Turians are beyond her realm of comprehension entirely. Their strange facial features, their gestures, their voices are all so completely, well, alien to her. 

She swallows her confusion – or is it disgust? – and decides to keep Garrus talking. “When did we meet?”

“About three and a half years ago,” Garrus answers. He pauses, thinking on his answer. “Damn. Feels like it’s been longer than that…Saren was a Spectre that went rogue, and you were tasked with tracking him down. Do you remember that at all?”

“…vaguely,” she answers. Maya had told her about it. “He hated humans, didn’t he?”

“No. Well, maybe. A lot of turians that fought in the First Contact War still harbor a grudge, but his actions were more motivated by the whole indoctrination thing than by racism,” Garrus explains. “Anyway. He attacked Eden Prime with the geth and a Reaper. I was working in C-Sec at the time and tasked with finding evidence against Saren. I ended up going with you to hunt him down.”

Yes, she remembers that; Maya told her he used to be at C-Sec. She gave her the run-down of all of Shepard’s little friends. She remembers seeing their faces, hearing their stories, and hating them to the core. Though she didn’t understand why. To be honest, Shepard still doesn’t have any idea. “And you’ve stuck with me since?”

He nods. “Through Saren, the Collectors, the Reapers…we’ve been just about everywhere together.” 

She doesn’t have to be turian to read the affection there. “We were…close?”

Garrus clears his throat, suddenly a little uncomfortable. “I- didn’t want to bring it up. Kind of a lot to bombard you with considering you don’t really remember, well, anything. Didn’t want to overload you.”

“Bring what up?” Shepard demands, frowning at him.

“We are – were – _together_.” The words hang in the air for a moment. Shepard stares at him. He seems to find the silence unbearable after about ten seconds, and rushes to fill it. “You don’t have to- we don’t have to- that can wait. Until you’re better.” 

The real Shepard was… _with_ Garrus? She doesn’t know much about relationships. Love wasn’t her top priority when she was learning to be human. But she can’t imagine herself with a turian. She can’t imagine _any_ human with a turian. How does that even work? Was the original Shepard out of her fucking mind? How could she have looked at Garrus’s scarred up, alien face and seen something handsome?

Garrus sighs. “I shouldn’t have told you that. The doctors don’t want to overload you with too much information all at once.”

Shit, what would the real Shepard have said in this situation? Shepard tries to think on her feet. When she met the original Shepard, she was diplomatic. Her voice was authoritative but strangely gentle. It’s something she’s not sure she can imitate. “I…it’s ok. I’m glad you told me.”

He looks surprised. Yes- that look definitely means surprised. The plates above his eyes move just slightly, and his mandibles flare out with a sudden jerk. “You are?”

“I want to know everything. About who I was-” Shepard pauses, correcting herself. “Who I _am_.”

Garrus seems pleased at that. “I think I can arrange that. There are a lot of people waiting to come see you; I haven’t been able to give them the go-ahead yet. But if you think it’ll help your memory…”

Well, she’s going to have to learn somehow. If she’s ever going to fool them into believing she’s the real Shepard, she’s going to have to get her memories. “I think it’ll do wonders.”

“I’ll badger your doctors into approving it, then,” he says. He makes an expression that she thinks is supposed to be a smile. “Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve bugged them about your treatment.”

“How long have you been here?” she asks.

“We limped back into the Citadel about…three months after the Crucible was activated,” he says. He waves her questioning look away, shaking his head. “It’s a long story. But I’ve been here ever since. The Reapers and the Keepers have rebuilt most of the Citadel since we got here.”

She stares at him. “…the _Reapers_ are helping rebuild?”

“Yep. I have no idea what you did up there Shepard, though Joker's theory is you taught the Reapers how to love,” he says, chuckling slightly.

Well, that’s another matter entirely. She’ll figure it out once she’s out of this damned hospital. “You mean you sat around for five months and just…waited on me to wake up?”

“You’ve got an apartment here still,” he says. “I’ve been sleeping there, working with the Council to get Palaven the aid it needs. But yeah, Huerta’s sort of become my base of operations these days.”

 _He really is in love with her. With ME_ , she thinks. Shit, how is she going to handle this? She doesn’t care about Garrus- breaking his heart wouldn’t hurt her a bit. But would it set the others off? Would they know that she isn’t the real Shepard? Best to play along. For now, anyways.

Shepard smiles, trying her best to imitate the real one. “I’m glad you stayed, Garrus.” 

He smiles again, his mandibles flaring ever so slightly. “I don’t want to force you into anything, Shepard. Not till you remember. But I’m not going anywhere anytime soon.” 

“Good.” _Fuck._


	3. Visitors

It takes two weeks, but finally Garrus convinces her doctors to let the other Normandy crew members stop by for a visit. And the parade of well-wishers begins with Joker and EDI.

He hobbles in, and Shepard realizes that even he can move around better than she can right now. The thought irritates her. But she swallows her frustration and smiles amicably, like you would for a stranger. Joker sits down in one of the chairs beside her bed, and EDI stands beside him.

“…it’s good to see you in one piece, Commander,” Joker says finally.

“It’s good to be in one piece,” she says. Yes, that’s definitely something the real Shepard would say. She’s getting better at this. She pauses. “I don’t want to be rude but-”

“Oh, right, amnesia,” Joker says. “I’m Joker, this is EDI.”

EDI smiles. “Joker was the pilot aboard your ship, the Normandy. I am the Normandy’s resident AI; we took this body from Cerberus, and it allows me full mobility both on and off of the ship.” 

It’s unnatural, unnerving. Electron and steel pretending to be real. But she forces herself to smile again, because that’s what _she_ would do. Aliens, abominations of nature, whatever. She took all sorts. Another reason why she shouldn’t have been Commander Shepard; when she’s out of this hospital, she’ll be far pickier with who joins her crew. “That’s…fascinating.”

“Do you remember Cerberus?” EDI asks.

Doctors in masks, needles, knives. Faraway voices calling her ‘it’ and ‘thing’. Oh, she remembers them alright. “A little.”

“They’ve disbanded for the most part,” EDI says. “We can find no trace of the Illusive Man, or any of his lieutenants.”

The question comes immediately, and she speaks without thinking. “What about Maya Brooks?”

Joker looks surprised; EDI answers at once. “Maya Brooks was shot and killed by Garrus when she attempted to escape custody.” She pauses. “You remember her?”

She has to think of something, and quick. She’s not supposed to remember Maya. She’s not supposed to remember any of them. “I- the name popped in my head. I didn’t know who. I just- I thought she was someone important.”

They keep talking to her. But all she can think of is Maya, and why the thought of her being dead doesn’t make her as happy as it should.

*

Next is Tali’zorah.

She talks of the peace between the geth and the quarians, a centuries old feud resolved in mere hours. She tells her about settlements that have sprung up on Rannoch, about quarian children that breathe their homeworld's air with no helmets, of geth with personalities. She tells her of all the amazing things she’s seen the real Shepard do. 

“You’re quiet, Shepard,” she says suddenly. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah,” Shepard says, smiling. She’s getting good at that; smiling in order to cover up what’s going on inside. Is that something the real Shepard did? “It’s just…a lot to take in. I can’t believe I did all of that.”

Tali pauses. “You’re right; I shouldn’t be overloading you with all of this. Your doctors are probably going to kill me later.”

Shepard forces a small chuckle. “Some days I feel like they want to kill _me_.”

“Garrus mentioned you’ve been a little…impatient when it comes to your treatment,” Tali says. There’s amusement in her voice. Though it’s hard to tell without a face to look at. What do quarians look like under there, she wonders? It’s unnerving, knowing that literally anything could be hiding behind that helmet. Though part of her thinks it might be nice. Walking around with no one being able to see your face or know who you really are. Her life would be much easier if Commander Shepard had been born a quarian.

“Here, this is a lot less heavy,” Tali says, pulling up a video on her omnitool. It’s a video of the real Shepard- dancing. Very badly. She giggles. “This is from the party we threw on the Citadel. Do you remember it?”

“I…no,” she says. She stares at the image. It’s so odd to see the great Commander, hero of the Citadel, savior of the galaxy…dancing like a complete moron. People are laughing, and the real Shepard is smiling. She’s never thought about what the real Shepard did in her off-duty hours. It’s hard to imagine her – or herself, for that matter – as anything but a soldier. 

Tali’s looking at her expectantly. She smiles again. “Do I _really_ dance like that?”

“Unfortunately.”

*

There’s countless people. Urdnot Wrex, Grunt, Ashley Williams, Jack, Specialist Traynor, Javik. Some of them tell her how things have been since the end of the war. There’s a population boom on Tuchanka, and the most popular names are ‘Shepard’ and 'Mordin'. Earth is rebuilding best it can. Grissom Academy is getting restarted. The Normandy SR2 has been officially retired. Prothean hospitals were apparently nothing like theirs, but she doesn’t really care about that. (Javik can apparently sound like a bitter old man if you let him talk long enough.)

Liara is the last to come in. 

She smiles and hesitates in the doorway. “You must be sick of talking to people you don’t even know.”

 _Yes_. “No; I want to try to remember.”

“I wanted to dig up some things from your childhood. The doctors say you don’t remember it at all,” she says. She sits down beside her bed. “It was a bit of a challenge. There aren’t many records from your childhood to begin with, and with Earth still trying to recover from Reaper occupation-”

She frowns. “Why aren’t there any records?”

Liara pauses, then seems to silently scold herself. “Of course you don’t remember…You were born on Earth, Shepard. For a time you lived in an orphanage, but you ran away when you were around fourteen. As far as I can tell you were homeless after that. You joined the Alliance when you turned eighteen.”

That doesn’t make any sense. How did a street rat from Earth become the great Commander Shepard? Before she can question it, however, Liara hands her a tablet. It has a picture of an infant. Small, red-faced, crying. Tiny hands balled into fists. She’s never seen a baby before. With a shock she realizes it must be Shepard. It’s hard to imagine her as an infant. Or herself, for that matter. Was she ever this small, this helpless? Cerberus accelerated her aging; if she was ever a baby, she didn’t stay one for very long. 

She swipes to the next picture. It’s a still from a old news feed about Earth orphanages. The little girl in the picture is scrawny, with angry green eyes. Her brilliant red hair is pulled into pigtails, and her clothes are too big for her. Her image probably appeared for maybe three seconds in the entire feed. A three second glimpse at the savior of the galaxy, playing with a doll so old its arms were falling off. 

She swipes to another picture. A biotic registration picture. She’s fourteen. Her hair is uncombed, her eyes still so angry. And in that moment she sees herself. When she looks in the mirror she sees that face with that expression. Full of hatred and rage. Angry at something, at someone. Maybe at everyone. She swipes the picture quickly, but it’s more of the same. Sixteen year old Shepard standing with a boy, throwing up a sign she doesn’t understand. She looks to Liara for clarification.

“…you were in an anti-turian gang when you were sixteen,” she says, a bit reluctantly. “The 10th Street Reds.”

“…an anti-turian gang,” Shepard repeats. 

Liara nods.

“…how did I go from hating turians to _fucking_ one?” she demands, incredulous.

The asari laughs. “You got older Shepard. Wiser, I guess.”

She swipes past the picture, and the next one is of Alliance boot camp. She’s in between two other recruits. They have their arms wrapped around each other, their hair buzzed short, in Alliance uniforms. And Shepard is smiling. No, not smiling, _grinning_. From ear to ear. The anger is gone from her eyes, replaced by pure joy. The joy that comes with finding where you belong. The rest of the pictures are from her early days in the Alliance. Laughing with the other recruits, going out for drinks. The rage is gone from her eyes.

She belonged. She was happy.

Shepard hands the tablet back to Liara suddenly. Her hands are still shaking. The doctors don't know what's wrong with them. Liara gives her a questioning look.

“Too much?” she asks quietly, gently.

She nods quickly. Liara reaches over and hugs her. “It’ll come back, Shepard; it’ll be alright.”

When Liara goes, Shepard is left alone in her room. She thinks about the real Shepard, how alike they were. But the real one was different. She found a place for herself. She found people that loved her, accepted her. All of the people that came to see her today didn’t come to see _her_. They came to see the real one, the one they adored. The one they would and had followed to the gates of hell. All that love, all those memories. It wasn’t fair. Why her? What made her so damn special? They’re the same. Same DNA. They both began life with nothing, with no one. Nothing’s different, save for their fingerprints. 

She thinks of the real Shepard’s angry young eyes, contrasted with her calm and peaceful demeanor later on in life. And here she is. Still angry. At the real Shepard, for existing. At Cerberus, for making her. At Maya, for waking her. At the Voice, for saving her. 

At herself. For existing. 

Shepard lets out a sob and wraps her arms around herself.


	4. Natural Rhythm

Five months later and the dextro food in the cafeteria still hasn’t gotten any better. 

Granted the hospital is doing the best it can. Many of the mass relays still aren’t back in working order, despite the Reapers best efforts to repair them after…whatever the hell happened when Shepard flipped the switch on the Crucible. It makes it harder to get dextro food, much less _good_ dextro food. 

Garrus takes his food into the waiting room, as has been his custom over the past several weeks. It’s technically against the rules. But so is going to see Shepard after visiting hours, and basically everything he’s done up to this point. Tonight’s dextro dinner is some tasteless _aracis_ meat topped with some spiced gravy colder than the ice caps of Noveria. It’s better than usual, at least, and he eats it without question. Not long after he’s done, Liara finally emerges from Shepard’s room.

“You might want to check on her,” she says softly. “I think I upset her.”

He sets his plate aside and gets up. “What happened?”

“I…believed gathering information from her childhood might help things,” Liara explains. Innocent enough; pretty much all of the Normandy crew turned up with pictures or vids to show Shepard. Garrus encouraged them to. “There wasn’t much, given her background and Earth’s current state…but when she got to the pictures from when she joined the Alliance, she became upset.”

That seems odd. Why would her early alliance days upset Shepard? Garrus frowns. “I’ll go check on her.”

Liara nods. “Tell her I’m sorry. I didn’t mean-”

He sets a hand on her shoulder. “It’s Shepard, Liara. She understands.”

“She doesn’t remember us, Garrus.” Liara lowers her voice. “She’s my best friend. This…this isn’t how I pictured her waking up.”

Garrus sighs. “None of us pictured things playing out like this. I sure as hell didn’t. But the doctors are sure it’s temporary. She’ll come back to us. We just have to be patient.” 

A slightly amused smile passes over the asari’s face. “I never thought I’d be listening to Garrus Vakarian preach to me about the importance of patience.”

“Yeah, well, sitting around a hospital for five months does that,” he replies, chuckling. “I’ll go see what’s bothering her.”

He heads down the hall towards her room. The nurses and doctors all nod to him as he walks by. Garrus has been here for so long he knows them all by name, and they know him. They ask about each other’s families. They’re good people. When it wasn’t clear if Shepard was going to make it, they drove themselves to exhaustion trying to take care of her. They checked her vitals religiously, kept her medicated, alerted her doctors when they noticed even the slightest change in anything. One day when this is over, he and Shepard will have to do something for them.

Shepard’s door opens automatically. She looks up at him, surprised. Tears are streaming down her face. Her arms – still laden with at least two different IVs – are wrapped around herself. When he walks in she freezes. “G-Garrus- I-”

“Shepard,” he sighs. Liara must have been putting it mildly. It takes a lot to make Shepard cry. In fact, in all the time he’s known her, he’s only seen her shed a tear once. He walks over to her and sits beside the bed. Part of him wants to take her hand, but he knows she’s not ready for that. She doesn’t even remember him. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s nothing.” She wipes at the tears with the back of her hand. 

“You don’t cry much,” Garrus says. 

“I’m- I’m just- I’m a little overwhelmed,” Shepard stammers out. “There are so many people…they remember me but I don’t remember them. And I feel awful that I don’t. They want me to be her – who I was before – so bad. And I want to be, too, but-”

Garrus frowns. “Hey, hey, hey. Calm down. It’s alright.”

Shepard lets out another sob. “I don’t- you shouldn’t see me like this.”

“I’ve seen you in worse conditions,” Garrus quips. “I saw you go seventy-eight hours without sleep during the Reaper War. Then there was the time you almost drowned trying to deal with Leviathan. Granted none of those were as bad as you in the mornings-”

“I get it,” she says. There’s a slight edge in her voice now. “It’s just- it’s frustrating. Not remembering. Not knowing.”

“I can’t relate. Never had amnesia. But I can imagine,” he says. He wants nothing more than to hold her and let her cry it out. Let her know it doesn’t matter, that it’s just one more hurtle they had to jump to get to the finish line. As soon as this as over – the moment her memory comes back and they release her from this hospital – they’re retiring to that tropical planet. Maybe even the one they crash-landed on. It was pretty. Isolated. They’ll get their happy ending, Reapers and amnesia be damned. “Maybe we should hold off on letting the others visit for a while.”

Shepard shakes her head. “I want them to come.”

That surprises him. His mandibles flare slightly. “But you said you were overwhelmed.”

“If that’s what it takes,” she says, staring down at her lap resolutely. “I want to know who I am.” 

Spirits help him. He wishes he could make this better. He wishes he could make her better. But he can’t. This is something her brain and her body has to work out for itself. “You will, Shepard; it’ll just take time.”

“Would it sound childish if I said I don’t want to wait?” she asks, glancing up at him. 

“Not a bit,” he says, smiling. “You know, usually you’re the one telling _me_ to be patient; what’s that human saying- how the tables have turned?”

A brief smile passes across her face. There it is; a real, genuine Shepard smile. He’s missed that. He’s missed that a lot, actually. “Something like that.”

There’s a silence, and it feels awkward. That’s something he’s not used to with her. Nothing with Shepard has ever been uncomfortable. (Well, maybe that first night. But that wasn’t really uncomfortable. More like…terrifying. In a good way.) Garrus tries to think of something to say. He says the first thing that comes to mind: “Joker mentioned that you remembered Maya Brooks.”

“That’s too strong a word for it,” Shepard says. “Her name popped into my head when he started talking about Cerberus.”

Now why would she remember that, of all things? “Do you remember anything else?” 

“…the clone,” she says softly.

“Ah,” he says. “That was a mess. Seems like every time I start thinking we’ve seen it all, the galaxy throws something else at us. We’re never bored at least.”

Shepard smiles again, just barely. 

“Your clone died,” Garrus says. “You tried to help her, but she didn’t want it. Almost felt bad for her, actually. There’s a reason the Council has a ban on cloning; it usually royally screws over the clone.”

“Yeah,” Shepard says. She’s silent for a moment, thinking. “…Liara showed me a picture of when I was a teenager. I was in a gang.”

Garrus can’t help but laugh. He remembers her sheepishly telling him this story a while back. She used to have a gang tattoo, apparently, but got it removed long before they ever met. “Yeah; you told me the story once. You used to blame turians for the whole orphan thing. I guess you thought they died in the Relay 314 Incident.”

She frowns, tugging at the hospital bracelet on her wrist. “What changed? How did I go from that to…you?”

“Not sure,” Garrus admits. “But if I had to take a guess, I think it’s because you realized you were angry at the wrong people.”

Shepard looks up at him, her brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”

“You convinced yourself that it was turians’ fault that your parents were gone; but really you just didn’t want to be alone. Not that I blame you for that; the galaxy is a big place. It can seem even bigger when you don’t have someone watching your back,” Garrus explains. How strange that he is now the one giving her these lessons. Shepard has taught him so much, and now he’s passing that wisdom back to her. 

She thinks on this for a bit. Neither of them say a word, but the silence no longer feels strange. Then, Shepard meets his eyes. “Were my parents really killed by turians?”

“As far as Liara can tell, no,” Garrus admits. “She tracked down your mother a while back. She offered to introduce you, but it didn’t sit right with you.”

“Some things are better left in the past,” Shepard says, her voice quiet. 

Now that sounds like his Shepard. He says, “Any other questions?”

“…why do I dance like a raloi with a stick shoved up its ass?” she asks.

Garrus can’t help but laugh at that. “If it makes you feel any better, I’m not much better. Turians aren’t exactly known for their natural rhythm.”

“That’s true.” Shepard smiles again. 

“But we have rhythm where it counts,” he jokes. As soon as he says it Garrus regrets it. Remarks like that come so easy to him, especially around Shepard. He’s used to them being together, to making those kinds of jokes around her. But before he can get an apology out, she giggles. She tries to cover it by putting her hand over her mouth, but he sees it. Garrus smiles. “What? It’s true.”

“Uh-huh.” Shepard smirks at him, disbelieving.

“You’ll remember eventually,” he says. “And we’re not completely hopeless in the rhythm department. There was that dance we had on the Citadel. Do you remember that?”

She shakes her head.

“We were pretty damn impressive,” Garrus says, chuckling. “Granted that took several hours of lessons.”

Shepard snorts. “ _You_ took dancing lessons?” 

“Yep,” Garrus replies, unashamed. “Spent six months preparing for the Reapers. Then on the side I danced and researched human culture.”

“Why humans?” she asks.

“I had someone I wanted to impress,” Garrus says vaguely. Shepard smiles again. He smiles back.


	5. Home Sweet Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay. It was a combination of holiday madness and a dead computer. Hopefully now that things have settled down, I can get back to regular updates.
> 
> Hope you guys had a great holiday!

Four months after waking up, she walks into the real Shepard's apartment with Garrus's hand at her elbow. She can walk fine by herself. For the most part. Too much exertion and she gets shaky. 

“I did my best to tidy up,” Garrus says. “I haven't spent much time here since you woke up, but...” 

Shepard walks in slowly and looks around. This place is _hers_ now. She stands in the living room and looks around. She's seen plenty of vids and pictures from the party the Commander threw here. It's almost like she was there at this point. She can imagine the music, the dancing, the laughter, the smell of alcohol. Now the apartment is silent. Its owner, its true owner anyway, is long gone. 

“Shepard?” Garrus says.

She turns sharply, looking at her. “Hm?”

“Do you remember where everything is?” he asks. 

“I...think so,” she says. Then she smiles. She's looked at the pictures, and she's perfected Shepard's smile. Gentle, but strong. After hearing so many stories, Shepard's begun to feign regaining her memory. It makes her nervous. But it has to happen eventually. “Thank you.”

Garrus smiles back. “I'll let you get settled. Call me if you need me.” He starts to leave, then pauses in the doorway. “Oh- and one other thing. I did a sweep of the apartment, but if you accidentally set off an alarm of some kind...just remember the code 'I heart Garrus'. Or, you know, run like hell.”

She raises an eyebrow at him.

“I might have gotten a little overprotective after the clone incident,” Garrus says, chuckling

With that, he's gone. The door closes automatically behind him, and she's alone. Shepard sets down her bag. It's mostly empty; just full of medicine and clothes. She walks slowly through the apartment. It feels...strange. As though someone is watching her. Shepard half expects to turn around and see the real one standing there, glaring. But it's just her.

She makes her way into the bedroom. The bed is nice. Big pillows, black sheets. All of her gifts – the flowers, the teddy bears, the cards, the _flowers_ – have been deposited in the corner of the room. Everything smells like roses and Thessia irises and Palaven _flosas_. Shepard flops down on top of the bed. It's soft, too. Much softer than her bed in the hospital. And its hers. This is all hers now. She got her wish. She's got Shepard's apartment, Shepard's name, even Shepard's friends. And none of them have any idea. 

It makes her laugh. She lays on the real Shepard's bed, surrounded by gifts meant for _her_ , and she laughs. 

“I won,” she says. Wherever the real Shepard is, she's not coming back. Her body is probably drifting somewhere through space, or she was obliterated by a Reaper. There's only one Shepard now. And it's her. The clone won out over the original, and she did what Cerberus never believed possible: she convinced even Shepard's closest friends that she was the real deal. “I won, _bitch_.”

She hops up and looks around. Shepard's closet is still filled with clothes. There's a couple of Alliance uniforms; dress whites, dress blues. Formal shit meant for ceremonies. But there's dresses, too. And blouses and tops and pants. And shoes. Apparently the Commander really loved her shoes. There's heels, flats, any kind of shoe you can imagine. She'll try them on later; she has some exploring to do. 

The next hour or so is spent adventuring through the apartment and discovering all she can. The shower is huge, the kitchen is fully stocked (Garrus's work, she guesses), and there's even a fucking _hot tub_. The last room she finds is an office of some sort. There's dust on the desk. When Garrus tidied up he must have missed this room. There's a computer on a desk, and a couple of books on a shelf. Shepard walks in slowly. There's a picture on one of the shelves of a man – Captain Anderson, if she remembers Maya's lessons correctly – and Shepard. They're both in uniform, standing at attention in front of the first Normandy. 

The Commander looks fresh-faced and young, hardly older than twenty. She rocketed through the ranks after the Skyllian Blitz. The war hero. The _savior_.

Shepard frowns and puts the frame face down. She turns her attention to the computer. It's powered off, and has been for a while. But when she sits at the desk, it flickers to life. She stares at it skeptically. 

“Please provide handprint sample.” The computer says.

Well, shit. She glances at her palm. You can clone almost everything. But some things are unique to a person: birthmarks, moles, and handprints to name a few. Shepard sighs and offers the computer her print anyway. It scans it- and lights up in recognition.

“Welcome, Shepard.” the computer says. 

She frowns. That- should not have worked. But she isn't going to question it. The desktop interface lights up. There isn't much on it. There's a file of pictures from the party that the real Shepard threw. She flicks through them, largely disinterested. The others have shown her plenty of pictures before. Though she pauses on one of the last few. It seems as the Commander and Garrus got progressively drunker, they started to take more and more selfies. The last one is of them on her bed. Garrus is nuzzling her, and they're both smiling. They look...immeasurably happy. In love.

“Shepard?”

She jumps slightly, startled. Liara is standing in the doorway. 

“I didn't mean to startle you,” Liara apologizes. She glances around the room and smiles just slightly. “I see Garrus forgot to clean up your office.”

“Housework isn't his strong suit,” Shepard says, standing up. She smiles slightly. “What brings you over here Liara?”

Liara smiles. “I was in the neighborhood and I wanted to see how you were settling in. You haven't been a civilian for some time, Shepard.”

 _Or ever_ , she thinks. She leans against the door frame, glancing around the room. She never imagined having a place of her own. Yet here she is. “I think I can adjust. It's better than the hospital at least; here I can leave my room without people staring at me.”

Her friend – no, _her_ friend – chuckles. “That's true. Oh- I had something cross my desk that I thought you should know about. Now that most of the relays are in working order again, and you're out of the hospital...the Council wants to hold an award ceremony for you.”

She raises an eyebrow. “What kind of ceremony?”

“Usually Spectres' achievements are kept quiet,” Liara explains. “They're meant to do their job quietly. But they think you deserve special recognition.”

“A medal from the Council,” Shepard says, rolling her eyes slightly. “I'm thrilled.”

“Oh, it's not just the Council,” Liara says. She grins a little. It's suddenly obvious she's been waiting all day to tell her this. “Every single species with a standing military is planning on giving you an award. The asari, the turians, the humans, the hanar, the elcor, the quarians-”

Every single species? Her eyes widen. She's completely dumbfounded. “The salarians?”

Liara pauses. The salarians did very little to help with the war effort; they were still angry that Shepard had cured the genophage. “They're in a delicate political situation right now. The whole galaxy is angry at them; not giving you something would risk rocking the boat even more. But giving you the highest honor they can give would be showing too much respect. So who knows what they'll come up with.”

“So when is this big award ceremony?” she asks. 

“The Council will probably call you in to discuss it in the next few days. They probably want to give you time to adjust,” Liara says. She sighs, then looks down. “Most people aren't aware you've lost your memory, Shepard. We wanted to keep your condition quiet; we thought you deserved some privacy. After all this.”

“I think I can fake my way through the Council,” she snorts. She sounds a bit too...unlike Shepard, and Liara glances at her. She'll have to keep a handle on that. “My memory has come back enough to where I think I'll be fine.”

Liara nods. She smiles a little bit. “I still can't believe you're standing here, Shepard. We thought- we thought you were gone for good. When we finally made it back to the Citadel and they said you were alive...you should have seen Garrus. He was so quiet after the Crucible. Threw himself into whatever work he could find. But when they said you were stable...I've never seen a turian run so fast.” Liara chuckles slightly at the memory. “We all practically sprinted to Huerta.” 

She looks away. There's a strange pain in her chest. “Garrus has been a good friend. I would have gone crazy in that hospital without him.”

“There is no Shepard without Vakarian,” Liara says, bumping her shoulder playfully. 

The pain in her chest is replaced by burning heat in her cheeks. She laughs and shoves Liara back. “My memory is only just starting to come back, you know.” 

“And when it does? Are you going to pick up where you left off?” Liara asks. She smiles and raises her eyebrows at Shepard. 

“Maybe,” she replies, a coy smile dancing across her lips. And, to her surprise, she's completely serious. She and Garrus have become- something. Friends, maybe. Close friends. He sat in Huerta with her almost every day, making her laugh and telling her stories about the real Shepard's past exploits. He's not bad. For a turian, anyway. She thinks of the pictures she saw on Shepard's computer; it might be nice to have someone look at her the way Garrus had looked at the real Shepard. But that raises a whole mess of things she doesn't even want to think about. So she diverts the attention away from herself. “What about you and Javik, hm? He's an agent of the Shadow Broker now, huh?”

It's Liara's turn to blush. Her cheeks turn dark blue. “That's not-”

“How's that book going?” she teases. “Or have you two gotten any work done at all?”

“Point taken, Shepard,” Liara says with an exasperated sigh. But she smiles. “Call me if you need anything, alright?”

“Will do,” Shepard says. She watches as Liara leaves, then heads back to her desk. The picture of the real Shepard and Garrus is still pulled up. She imagines Garrus's face when he was told that 'Shepard' was still alive. It leaves a sour taste in her mouth, and she closes out the file. She finds another- this one filled with vids. She opens the first one.

It's Commander Shepard, sitting in her quarters on the Normandy. 

“Log number 1, date is...July 7th, 2185.” the Commander says. “I figure I should start keeping track of things now, just in case working with Cerberus goes awry. So I'll have something to prove my innocence or they'll use this as evidence in my court martial. Either way.”

It's...strange. Seeing the real Shepard just sitting, talking. Being herself. She runs her hand through her auburn hair and sighs. The clone imitates the gesture. 

“I'm still not sure who I can trust on this ship,” she says. “I need my old crew back. People I can trust. God knows where they are now, though. Two years-” The Commander pauses and runs her hand through her hair again. “Two damn years. Just gone.” Another pause. “We're heading to Omega now. There's a doctor there that could be helpful, and someone called Archangel. Maybe I'll be able to trust them farther than I can throw them. End log.”

The video ends there. She scrolls through the file. There are over two hundred logs, stretching from Shepard's resurrection to the end of the Reaper War. She decides to watch them all later. It could be good for learning Shepard's mannerisms. If she's going to play the part, she's going to play it well. 

She has a public appearance to prepare for.


	6. Stage Fright

The real Commander's dress whites fit like a glove. She stands in front of the mirror, inspecting herself. She spent at least three hours on the extranet researching the proper way to wear an Alliance navy dress white uniform. It's something that would be second-nature to the real Shepard. The gold buttons along the front shine, and everything is pressed cleaned to perfection. She reaches into a velvet-lined box where Shepard kept her medals. She pins them all in the correct way, consulting the diagram on her omni-tool for instructions. 

She hardly recognizes herself when she looks at the final result. She looks just like the real deal. Except for her eyes. Her eyes still look so _intense_ , no matter what she does. She cannot not master the calm and peaceable gaze the real Commander had. To her, her eyes are a dead giveaway. No one else seems to notice it, however. Perhaps they simply aren’t looking for it. 

“Shepard?” There's a knock on her door.

“Come in,” she says, tugging at her sleeves.

Garrus walks in. He's dressed in the best civilian clothes he owns. He looks...nice. She smiles at him, and he smiles back. “I don't think I've seen you in that uniform before. Looks good.”

“Really hard to keep clean, though,” she says. 

“Just don’t touch anything and you should be alright,” he says, chuckling. “Anyways, we're all ready when you are.”

There's a flutter of nervousness in her chest. It's been almost four months since she's seen half of Shepard's old friends. What if they catch on? What if she makes some small mistake, and they all figure it out? Shepard takes a deep breath and tries her best to calm her nerves. She walks out with Garrus and heads for the stairs. The living room is full of people from the Normandy. All of them. Liara, Joker, EDI, Tali, Ashley, Wrex, Grunt, Jack, Zaeed, Samara, Jacob, Miranda, Traynor, Cortez, Javik. All dressed in their best. They turn to look at her as she comes down the stairs, and she grips the rail tighter than normal.

“Last time you'll get to wear that for a while, huh Lola?” James jokes. He's wearing his own dress white uniform- but with fewer medals.

“Retiring will have its perks,” she says, smiling. “This thing looks better hanging up in a closet.”

“You look great, Shepard,” Tali says, setting a hand on her shoulder.

“Hell of a lot better than when they found her,” Jack says. Her idea of 'formal' attire seems to be a shirt that covers half her torso and a pair of black pants. She crosses her arms and smirks. “Must feel good not to have doctors chasing after you with needles every time you go to take a shit.”

She shudders at the thought. Fuck needles, honestly. “You have no idea.” She pauses, then smiles. “Thank you guys for coming out.”

“Wouldn't miss it for the world,” Wrex says, smacking her hard on the back. “After we're done with all this diplomatic shit, we'll go out for drinks.”

The smack practically knocks the wind out of her. She manages to grin. “Just so long as I can change out of my uniform first; I went almost fifteen years without messing this thing up. Not going to start now.”

“Before we make plans for celebrations, I would suggest we prepare for the ceremony,” Javik interjects. “You are going to be late, Commander.”

The next twenty minutes or so is a whirl of activity. Herding everyone to the transit, climbing into the cars. When they finally set out, she's ended up in the same car as Joker, Tali, and Garrus. She sits in the back and looks out the window. She notices there’s an unusual amount of traffic today; she’s willing to bet it’s because of the ceremony. It'll be the public's first look at Commander Shepard since before the end of the war. Billions of people will be watching. What if one of them notices something? What if-

“Nervous?” Garrus asks.

She looks at him. “Hm?”

“You look distracted is all.” Garrus offers her a comforting smile. “You'll be fine; you tamed the Reapers. You can handle a couple of diplomats singing your praises.”

“And just think of the party we'll throw afterwards,” Tali says from the front seat. “You deserve to get drunk and have a good time.”

“I thought we all agreed you aren't allowed to drink at parties anymore,” Joker remarks.

“The tattoo was Jack's fault!”

Shepard chuckles and glances back at Garrus. “A little nervous, yeah. There's going to be a lot of people watching.”

“Shepard, you could go up on that stage and punch out the asari councilor and no one would even blink,” Garrus says. “You're the galaxy's biggest hero. You can do whatever you want at this point.”

“Good to know,” she says, smiling. She sighs and fiddles with the medals pinned to her uniform. Wearing them feels- well- _wrong_ , somehow. She spent the last couple of nights looking up their meanings. One for an injury while in active service, one for becoming an N7, several more for going above and beyond the call of duty. And, of course, the Star of Terra. For saving Elysium almost single-handedly. The real Shepard left quite the legacy behind.

“There's something else bothering you,” Garrus says suddenly.

She looks towards him, trying to feign ignorance. But Garrus is tough to fool. One look, and she cracks. “I- I don't remember half of what I did to earn these. It feels wrong to wear them.”

His expression softens, and he sets a hand on her shoulder. “You will, Shepard. You're still recovering. Not everything is going to come back at once.”

“Most of what's important has come back,” she says, giving him a meaningful look. His mandibles flare slightly in surprise.

“Then you remember you still owe me twenty credits after that last game of Wicked Grace we played-” Joker jumps in. She shoots a look at the back of his head, and Garrus laughs.

“He's messing with you Shepard. You only owe him ten,” Garrus says, leaning back in his seat.

“Don't tell her that! We have to take advantage of the amnesia while we can,” Joker replies. 

They all laugh a bit. Joker makes a turn, and Shepard gets a glimpse of where the ceremony will be held. It’s out in the open, by the lake. A stage is set up. Cameras are already hovering around it. But it’s not the stage she’s focused on. It’s the thousands of people already gathered in front of it. The sight makes her heart stop. All those eyes watching her, and the billions more that would be watching from their homes-

“I don’t think I can do this,” she whispers.

She feels a hand on her shoulder and looks at Garrus. He nods once. “You’ve got this, Shepard. You’ve faced a lot worse than this.”

If he only knew. Shepard manages to smile and nod. Deep down, she wants to puke. 

_Just get through this_ , she thinks to herself. _Just get through this._

*

She’s escorted to the stage almost as soon as they park. (Javik was right; they _were_ running late.) The others trail after her. They have seats reserved for them in the front row. As she is walked towards the stage, she feels a mounting sense of doom. Is this how prisoners felt when they were preparing to be hanged? The crowd is drawing ever closer. Many people stand up or turn around to look at her. Then, as she begins to walk up the aisle, they start cheering.

The noise is deafening. Thousands of people screaming her name, clapping, cheering. There are children held aloft on their mother’s shoulders in an attempt to get a glimpse at her. People wave, try to reach for her. She tries her best to smile. But she feels like her ears are going to burst. She reaches the steps of the stage, and stumbles on the first step. One of the guards catches her by her elbow and helps her up. Shepard’s cheeks burn.

Up on stage is the Council, and various representatives from several species. Wrex climbs the steps behind her and takes his place in the last open seat. He’ll be representing the krogan, she guesses.

The cheering continues for what feels like an eternity. She stands there and smiles, for lack of anything better to do. Her hands are shaking, so she clasps them behind her back. After what feels twelve fucking years, the asari councilor steps up to a podium. The crowd slowly begins to fall silent. The councilor turns to Shepard and smiles. “We are gathered here today to honor this brave woman, who through her determination-”

Whatever the hell she says is drowned out by more cheering. To her credit, the councilor smiles graciously and waits for the crowd to get their fill.

They love her, she realizes.

They don’t even know her and they love her. 

It makes her feel strangely validated. People care about her. They like her. They’re screaming her name, for God’s sake! But she knows it’s not her they love. It’s _her_. The Commander. The woman whose body is probably floating through deep space right now. The cheering dies down, and the council keeps talking. She tells of great deeds that Shepard did, including pulling the Council’s ass out of the fire. (Twice.) The longer the list gets, the greater the weight in her chest begins to feel. 

Eventually she gets to the point. “On behalf of the Council, and on behalf of the asari people, I would like to present you with two awards: the Medal of Interplanetary Service and the Pride of Parintha.” 

The first is a gold medal bearing the Council’s insignia on a blue and white ribbon. The councilor loops it around her neck, and it rests on her collarbone. The second is gorgeous blue badge in the shape of a seven-pointed star. A lighter blue gemstone rests in the middle of it. The councilor pins it to her uniform, and the crowd cheers again.

She stands there and listens to the speeches. All showering praise on her, some citing testimony from all the people she’s helped. She’s given the turian _korona decus_ , a utilitarian headdress made of precious metals from Palaven; the elcor Medal of Distinguished Defense and Valor, a giant medal that strains her neck when it’s placed on; the salarian Service Badge, a medium-sized silver badge in the shape of a thin diamond; the hanar have no medal or badge to give, but vow to provide her with asylum on any hanar colony should she require it; the quarian _ke’tara_ , a bright red crescent moon that doesn’t so much pin to her shirt as it does stick; the krogan have no award to give, but Wrex spends a good ten minutes telling stories about her and pledging to name his firstborn child ‘Shepard’; and the human Medal of Valor, the highest military honor any Alliance soldier could ever hope to receive.

By the time the ceremony ends, her throat is dry, her head hurts, and she’s sick of people pinning shit to her shirt and putting things around her neck. Just when she thinks it’s over, however, the asari councilor sets a hand on her shoulder and steers her to the microphone.

No one told her she was supposed to speak. _No one told her she was supposed to speak_. Shepard shoots a sharp look to Liara, who waves her hands helplessly. 

“I…” she says, and her voice booms over the Presidium. Shepard is suddenly hyperaware of the fact that billions of people on thousands of planets and stations are watching her. Listening to her. She swallows hard. “I don’t know what else I can say besides thank you. I think I’m the first person to ever be given an award by every single standing military in the galaxy.” They’re all still looking at her. Fuck, why are they still looking at her? What would the real Shepard say? “But- I couldn’t have done any of this without my crew. And the sacrifices that they made to get us here. They’ve been with me since the beginning. I owe them everything.” 

She pauses. Yes, that was good. “The Normandy crew is full of exemplary people. But we’re just one crew. The people of the galaxy were the ones that made the difference. I didn’t build the Crucible. You did. I didn’t fight the Reaper fleet. You did. I didn’t stand on your home worlds and keep fighting. You did. No one person can change the galaxy. It takes billions, working together to achieve one goal. So thank you. For the ribbons, the medals- and for saving the galaxy.”

When she steps back from the podium she thinks she may puke. But the crowd erupts into more cheering. Shepard glances at Garrus in the front row. He gives her a small nod, and she smiles. 

She’s getting pretty good at this.


	7. Korbal

Shepard places all the medals and awards on her dresser. None of them will fit in the velvet-lined box the real Shepard kept hers in; it was specifically made for only Alliance medals, and each one has a very specific place. No human has ever received medals from foreign militaries- or so many. She is the first, and possibly the only in history.

Well. _She_ isn’t. 

She looks in the mirror. Same face. Same eyes. Same hair. The freckles are slightly different; she has them, but she doubts they’re in the exact same places. (Not that anyone will notice.) But they’re not the same. At one point, not too long ago, she couldn’t understand it. Why her? What made _her_ so special? She understood now that it went far beyond mere genetics. There had been something unique about the real Shepard. Something that she is certain she will never be able to have. She can only imitate.

_“And you’re just a cheap imitation of the real thing,” Garrus spat._

“Shepard?”

She turns, and Garrus is standing in the doorway. He pauses. “Are you not going to change?”

It’s only then Shepard realizes she’s still in her uniform. She smiles, embarrassed. “Sorry; I got a little distracted. I’ll be ready in a minute.”

“So in twenty. Got it,” Garrus quips. As the door closes behind him, she smiles.

Shepard opens her closet, and the Commander’s civilian wardrobe stares back at her. She has no idea what to wear out to a club. In the end she chooses a slinky black dress with a low neckline. It’s hard to imagine the great Commander Shepard wearing anything like this. It’s so…not militaristic. It’s fashionable, actually.

When she steps out of the room, Garrus is waiting for her. All the others have gone straight to the club; they only stopped by the apartment so she could change. 

“How do I look?” she asks, giving him a small twirl.

His mandibles flare, and he looks at her in a way that makes her heart stop. It’s the same expression he’d had in that picture when he looked at Shepard: complete and utter adoration. She realizes with a sudden jolt that she is loved. Garrus Vakarian loves her. It makes her feel warm. Warm and light, like a cloud. 

“Stunning,” Garrus finally says.

She walks closer, smiling up at him. “You should probably pick your mandible up off the floor.”

He chuckles and grabs her hands. His fingers intertwine with hers, and somehow he knows exactly how to make them fit together despite him lacking two fingers. “You did great today. You always were good at speeches on the fly.”

“Must be in my DNA,” she says quietly. She looks away. Once again, she’s forced to face the facts: she’s not the real Shepard. She’s a cheap imitation. Garrus had said so himself almost a year before.

Garrus grabs her chin gently and tilts her face up. “Something’s bothering you.”

It suddenly hits her that she trusts him. How could she not? Garrus is a trustworthy, steadfast person. He’s been by her side ever since she woke up. She opens her mouth to tell him the truth. The medals aren’t hers, the accomplishments aren’t hers, he’s not hers, none of this is hers- 

And she remembers Maya.

She remembers hanging off the Normandy, clawing to gain some ground. Garrus and Tali dove to help Shepard. They grabbed her, pulled her up. She had looked to Maya. Maya had looked at her. And she’d turned away. 

Maya, the first person she’d ever seen. The first voice she’d ever heard. The person who taught her everything, who set her on her path to begin with, had abandoned her. Who is to say that Garrus wouldn’t do the same thing? She closes her mouth and tries to think of something else to say. Finally she says, “It’s- it’s us. I miss us.”

He blinks and tilts his head slightly. “You miss us?”

“I remember…I remember how we used to be,” she lies. “I want it back.”

“You remember everything?” He stares at her in surprise.

“Not- not everything. Tuchanka is still fuzzy. My childhood. What happened at the Crucible- none of that has come back. But a lot of it has,” she says. “I remember you and me.”

“Can’t say I’m not pleased,” Garrus says. She’s learning to recognize certain sub-vocals. She’ll never understand them the way turians do, but she can definitely comprehend the distinctive hum in his voice. “I didn’t want to make you feel…obligated to anything. Not when you had no idea who I was.”

She smiles a little bit. “You’re getting pretty good at this whole patience thing, Garrus.”

“Well I had a pretty good teacher,” he says. He leans down and presses his forehead to hers. She smiles, and he takes a minute to pull away. “Come on; everyone else is probably wondering where we are.”

Shepard smiles. As they walk out together, Garrus takes her hand in his. She feels like she could float up into the sky. 

*

“Korbal!” Wrex, Grunt, Shepard, and Ashley yell in unison, each of them slamming their shot glasses down on the bar. They erupt into laughter, and Wrex smacks Shepard on the back. She’s ready for it this time and bumps her shoulder against his.

“You better not let retirement make you soft, Shepard,” Wrex says. “It’d be a damn shame.”

“Like retirement made you soft?” she jokes. Grunt and Ashley laugh. Wrex snorts.

“Another round,” he says to the bartender. “And bring us something special for the Commander.”

The bartender nods. A minute later she slides everyone more drinks. She hands Shepard something green. When she looks at her questioningly, the asari simply nods to Wrex. She looks to him. “What is this?”

“Try it,” Wrex encourages her. She feels like he’s issuing some sort of challenge. Well, like hell she’s backing down from it. Besides; it’s just one shot. 

She knocks it back, and then falls out of her seat.

Wrex and Grunt erupt into uproarious laughter, slamming their fists on the bar. Ashley helps Shepard back into her seat, giving them skeptical looks. “Ryncol? Really?”

“I had her water it down,” Wrex says, chuckling. 

“With _what_?” Shepard demands. Her throat is still burning.

He shrugs. “Some human swill. Vodka, I think?”

“I’m gonna take a break,” Shepard says. “I want to be able to remember this tomorrow morning.” When she gets up, Ashley does too. 

“Let’s go dance,” she says. And before Shepard can protest they’re out on the dance floor. 

Everyone has apparently been waiting all night for this, judging by the looks her friends are giving her. They’re all grinning and elbowing each other. Waiting for something. Ashley starts dancing next to her. Shepard pauses; and then she just starts moving to the beat. It comes naturally, like breathing. Ashley pauses, apparently stunned.

“Did the concussion knock some rhythm into you?” Ashley yells over the music, then laughs.

“Go Shepard!” Tali cheers. 

She’s drunk, and she’s surrounded by people laughing and dancing with her. And she’s happy. When she glances at Garrus he’s sitting at the bar still, and he’s smiling. Shepard loves it when he looks at her like that. She loves him.

*

For the first time since she moved back in, Garrus stays over at the apartment.

They’re both a little drunk still. She keeps laughing at everything – the way they struggle to open the door, the way she trips over the threshold, how Garrus falls while trying to help her up. When they manage to get back on their feet, he presses his mouth against her cheek in what could only be a turian version of a human kiss. 

“Where’d you learn to dance like that?” he asks, nuzzling her. 

“The Reapers,” she laughs. He laughs too. Shepard grabs his hand and pulls him towards the stairs. “C’mon!”

Getting out of her clothes takes more coordination than she realizes. The dress’s zipper is being stubborn. She can only get it down halfway. Eventually Shepard gives up and just shimmies out of it best she can. Garrus has some trouble with his shirt, but everything else comes off fairly easily. They collapse on to the bed together, and she kisses him. He runs a finger over a birthmark on her hip. She runs her hands over the plates on his chest. 

“Do you remember this?” he asks, kissing her. 

“Jog my memory,” she says teasingly. She laughs as he flips her on to her back, then pulls him into another kiss.


	8. Little Changes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry it's been eons since the last update! Hopefully I can get back on track with regular chapters!

When Garrus awakes the next morning, he can’t help but wonder what the hell is wrong with him.

Shepard is still sleeping. She sleeps differently now; before she always slept flat on her back. Now she’s lying on her side, her arms tucked underneath her head. Normally the sight of Shepard sleeping makes him smile. But this morning it just…doesn’t. It’s as though something just isn’t quite in the same place, and stubbornly refuses to click back to where it belongs. The feeling has been there for a time- but now it’s become impossible to ignore.

He frowns as he looks at her. Garrus knows Shepard’s body almost as well as she does. He knows and adores each little scar, each freckle. But somehow it has all…changed. There are scars where there aren’t supposed to be, and some scars are missing entirely. There’s a birthmark on her hip he’s never noticed before. 

_It’s still Shepard_ , he tells himself stubbornly. _Nothing’s changed._

Then why doesn’t he feel the same way when he looks at her? Why is there always something off when he speaks to her? 

Spirits. He still loves her, doesn’t he?

Doesn’t he?

The idea that he might have fallen out of love with her is, well, fucking terrifying. For so long he’s wanted her back. He sat in the hospital for months praying to whatever deities he could think of that she would make it. Now she’s here – beside him, sleeping, happy – and he doesn’t know how he feels about her. 

_What the hell is wrong with me?_

Shepard’s eyes open. She smiles sleepily. “Morning.”

“Morning,” he says. His tone must give him away, because she sits up slightly and looks at him.

“Something wrong?” she asks. She rubs one of her eyes with her hand.

“No. Just…a little hungover,” Garrus says. He leans close and presses his mouth to her forehead in a quick kiss. 

She smiles. “I feel that- the ryncol hit me hard.”

Spirits, look at her. She’s perfect. She’s beautiful, she’s smart, she’s strong, she’s fucking _Commander Shepard_. Garrus hasn’t wanted anyone else. So why does he feel so strange? Why does he feel like something is wrong? “Want some breakfast?”

“I’ll take a rain check on that,” she says, sitting up. “I’m way too nauseas for food.” 

“Coffee?” he asks.

She considers. “Sure.”

“I know how you like it,” he says as he gets up. At least, he thinks he does. Or perhaps that’s changed, too. 

*

“Garrus? _Garrus_?”

He looks up. Liara sits across the table from him, her face inquisitive. Garrus sighs. “Sorry.”

“Are you that tired of hearing me talk about this book?” Liara asks, looking at him in amusement. 

“I am one of the authors and _I_ am tired of hearing about it,” Javik says, sipping his drink.

Liara rolls her eyes at him, then looks to Garrus. “You seem distracted, Garrus; usually you’re a lot more talkative than this.”

It’s been a week since their night out. A week since he and Shepard…damn it, why isn’t he happy about this? They’re so close. That happy ending they talked about – the tropical planet, a carefree life, maybe a couple kids – is within reach.

And he feels nothing.

“I just…have a lot on my mind,” he says. 

“Trouble with Shepard?” Liara quirks an eyebrow.

He hesitates, and she has her answer. Garrus sighs. “I don’t know what’s wrong.”

“Perhaps you angered her,” Javik suggests. “I have noticed that primitive females tend to be more sensitive than those of my time.” This earns him a sideways look from Liara, but he seems unfazed. 

“It’s not her,” Garrus says. “It’s me. I don’t know what’s wrong. It just- it feels different. _She_ feels different. Like she’s changed, somehow, but she hasn’t.” It sounds even more foolish saying it aloud. Of course she won’t be exactly the same as she was- she still has traces of retrograde amnesia, after all. But even what has come back… 

Liara smiles gently. “You two have been through a lot. It’s not going to be exactly how it was. It’ll work out; you’ll see.”

Garrus returns the smile. She’s right. Of course she’s right. 

As they finish their lunch, he resolves to go see her. Garrus loves her. He always will. And he’s not going to let her go again.

*

When she opens the door, she’s dressed in nothing but a tank top and a pair of shorts. Her hair is tousled and there’s a cup of coffee in one of her hands. Her green eyes widen in surprise. “Garrus? I didn’t realize you were-”

He steps inside and kisses her. 

She’s surprised, but she curls her fingers over the edge of his carapace. He lets out a low purr as he pulls away. How could he ever think he didn’t love her? Garrus sets a hand on her cheek, and she smiles up at him. That beautiful, sweet smile. It’s only then he hears someone clear their throat. Garrus looks into the living room and sees Tali and Ashley sitting on the couch. There’s a vid playing on the screen.

“Girl’s night,” Shepard says sheepishly. 

“Oh, no, don’t let us interrupt,” Ashley calls from the couch.

“You can stay, if you want,” Shepard says, looking back to him.

He kisses her again, soft and sweet. His fingers run through her red hair. Since she doesn’t have to keep it to Alliance regulations anymore, it’s gotten longer. Garrus has found he enjoys this change. It’s beautiful. “No, it’s fine. I just wanted to stop by and see you.”

Shepard blushes, then grins. “Well, thanks for stopping by.”

“I’ll come back later,” he says quietly, pressing his forehead to hers.

“You’d better,” she replies. 

*

Garrus lets himself into the apartment later that night. Everything is quiet and dark, almost eerily so. The only light is coming from the giant window in the living room. (The giant window that Shepard will not let him make smaller, despite the fact it’s a huge safety concern.) He stands there for a moment, staring out at the Citadel, then pauses. He hears a voice. Shepard’s voice. But who is she talking to?

He heads upstairs and follows the sounds to her office. The door is open, and soft yellow light is spilling out into the hall. Shepard is asleep at her desk, one arm underneath her head. And there’s a vid playing. Garrus walks around behind her and watches curiously. 

It’s Shepard, but from months ago. 

“…this is day 51 of my incarceration,” Shepard is saying. Behind her he can see Earth. The sun is shining brightly, and the city is alive with activity. “Nothing new to report. Don’t know why I keep making these logs, actually. But it’s something to do.” She pauses and sighs. “They keep pushing back my court date. At this rate I want to just get it over with.” Shepard glances out the window. It’s a longing look that makes his heart ache. “Been thinking a lot about the Normandy. And everyone. I wonder what they’re doing.” She adds quietly: “I wonder what Garrus is up to.”

She sighs and runs her hand through her hair. A familiar gesture. Garrus remembers teasing her about it during the war: “You’ll get your hair tangled that way, you know.”

On screen, Shepard looks back towards the camera. “Guess that’s all there is to say at this point. End log.”

Garrus smiles. He sets a hand on Shepard’s shoulder. She wakes with a small jolt and sits up. There’s sleep in her eyes and a little bit of drool in the corner of her mouth. What’s that human fairytale? Sleeping Beauty? He imagines that she must have looked a great deal like Shepard does now; groggy, disheveled, but somehow beautiful. 

“Mm? Garrus?” Shepard rubs at her eyes. Her eyes flick to the screen, and she suddenly looks startled. As though he caught her watching porn rather than old video logs. She quickly closes them out. “I was just- I-”

“Reliving old memories?” he asks, pressing his mouth against her temple. 

She relaxes. “Yeah. Yeah, I was.”

He looks at the screen, then back to her. Why does she feel guilty about watching old logs? There’s nothing wrong with that. Unless-

“Shepard, do you not remember anything?” he says suddenly.

“No, no I do!” she says. She stands up. “I do. It’s just…reminders.”

Spirits. Here they’ve thought the amnesia was going away. But if she is just watching old logs, parroting what she heard herself say… “Shepard, if it’s not going away you need to tell your doctors. They think you’re better-”

“I am!” she insists. “I am. I just- I feel like I’m not the same. I want to be the same. For you.” There are tears in her eyes. “And you’ve been avoiding me since we- since- I know I’m not how I was and that bothers you. I _know_ it does.”

He pulls her close, and she cries into his chest. All Garrus can do is run his hands through her hair and let her cry it out. He can’t even deny that he noticed that anything was different; he has been avoiding her after all. The guilt weighs heavy on him. All this time he’s wanted nothing more than to have Shepard be alive and well and _safe_ , and now he’s ungrateful when it’s given to him. 

“I want to be the same,” she sobs. “I want to be the same, so you’ll love me…”

“I do love you, Shepard,” he insists. 

She looks up at him with tearful green eyes. It’s still so strange to see her crying. He supposes it’s just one of the many little things that had changed. One of the many little things that he will come to love. He presses his forehead against hers. She hiccups, and he almost smiles. 

“I love you more than anything,” he says quietly. 

Shepard smiles and kisses him. But that night as she nestles up against him, Garrus can’t help but feel like he’s lied to her.


	9. Falling Skies

The Commander looks as tired as her clone feels. For a minute she doesn’t say anything. She just sits in silence in front of the camera, shoulders hunched, not looking at anything in particular. Her hair is messy and dirty. There’s dust on her face. She hasn’t even taken off her armor. 

“I’m so sick of this fucking war,” she says suddenly. And her voice cracks. “I’m so tired, and we’re nowhere near done.”

She runs her hand through her hair. And it’s only then that the clone realizes she’s crying. Tears roll down her face and make tracts in the dust. She wipes at her eyes. Her voice is strained. “End log.”

She’s left sitting at the desk in silence. She stares at the blank screen. The rest of the logs are sitting there, waiting to be watched. For weeks she’s looked over them, studied them, tried to mimic Shepard exactly. And it still isn’t enough. She can tell. Even when Garrus is with her – even when he holds her, kisses her, tells her he loves her – she knows he’s lying. She can _tell._

Shepard sighs and runs her hand through her hair. It’s an almost instinctual motion now. She’s practiced it to the point where sometimes she forgets it’s not an actual habit of hers. 

Is watching the logs even worth it anymore? Is pretending? Garrus believes her- or he wants to, at least. She’s not sure which one is worse.

The screen lights up. _Call incoming from Liara T’soni._

“Answer,” she says after a moment of hesitation.

Liara appears on the screen. She smiles, then pauses. “Shepard? Are you alright? You look-”

“Like shit?” Shepard runs her hand through her hair again. “I feel like shit.”

“What’s wrong?” Liara gives her a concerned look. 

“Just…I don’t know. A lot on my mind?” She shrugs. She thinks back to the log. She thinks of the real Shepard, too tired to even take off her armor. A lot had been on her mind, too. How did she handle it? How did she handle the weight of the galaxy on her shoulders?

And how in the hell was she supposed to handle the weight of her legacy?

“Well, I have something that might cheer you up,” Liara says. There’s a hint of a smile on her face. “Can we meet for lunch tomorrow? I’ve got a surprise for you.”

She raises an eyebrow. “What kind of surprise?”

“It wouldn’t be a surprise if I told you, Shepard,” Liara says. “Can you meet me tomorrow?”

She sighs. “Sure, Liara.”

Liara offers her a comforting smile. “Try to get some rest, Shepard; you look exhausted.”

“I’ll try. See you tomorrow, Liara.” They both hang up, and she looks back at the logs. She’s gone through most of them; there’s only ten or fifteen she hasn’t looked through. Her finger hovers over the last log. She hits it, and Shepard appears on screen again.

“ETA to Earth is now…three hours,” she says. She takes a deep breath. “This is it. Everything we’ve done…everything we’ve sacrificed…it’s all coming to a head.” Shepard looks tired. So, so tired. “I don’t know if we can ever be prepared for this. But we’re as close as we’re going to get.” Suddenly someone else comes into the frame. 

Garrus wraps his arms around her and sets his head on her shoulder. “What happened to those great motivational speeches you’ve always been so good at?”

A smile tugs at her lips. “This is just for _me_.”

“So you’ll be able to write your memoirs?” Garrus suggests. “It’ll be a big hit after you save the entire galaxy.”

The Commander chuckles, and Garrus lets out a low purr. She closes her eyes and leans against him. In his arms, she looks happy. At peace. “I love you, Garrus.”

“I love you too,” he says. And it’s obvious he means it. He holds Shepard as close to him as possible, but acts as though she’s somehow still too far away from him. He looks at her with adoration in his eyes. The words ‘I love you too’ sound gentle and genuine. “We’d better get going. We have a galaxy to save.”

Shepard nods. As Garrus gets up she says, “End log.”

The tears are back now. Garrus has told her he loves her. He’s said it multiple times. But he’s never said it like that. Full of love and affection and adoration. When he says it, he’s almost trying to convince her that he does. 

Or trying to convince himself.

_What made her so special?_ She thinks. _Why does he love her and not me? We’re the same._

_We’re the exact same._

*

She meets Liara in a little café on the Presidium. The asari is waiting for her with a cup of coffee already prepared. Lots of cream, no sugar. The way the Commander took it. She’s not even sure she likes coffee, but she pretends for the sake of keeping up appearances. 

“So what’s this surprise?” Shepard sips her coffee. It’s too milky. 

Liara smiles and hands her a data pad. “I know you’re still having trouble remembering some things- especially your childhood. I think it’s because you don’t have much of anything to remind you. So I did some digging.”

The data pad has pictures. Tons of pictures, actually. All of them seemed to have been painstakingly collected to form a timeline of the Commander’s youth. She swipes through them in amazement. She sees the Commander as an infant in the arms of one of the orphanage’s caretakers. Her big green eyes stare at the camera in confusion while the caretaker smiles. There’s pictures of her playing with other children in the orphanage. There’s even a vid or two. One shows a ten-year-old commander playing kickball with several other children. She kicks it as it rolls towards her and runs as the other children cheer. Another vid shows the Commander at the age of thirteen. It’s without audio; she leans against a wall with two other girls and smokes a cigarette. 

Shepard swipes through them all, taking it all in. The tears start, and she doesn’t know why or how. 

“Shepard?” Liara looks at her with concern. “I didn’t mean to upset you-”

“No, no, it’s fine,” she says. She hands the data pad back to Liara. “Thank you. I just…it’s…it’s a little hard.”

“I understand, Shepard,” Liara says. She stows the data pad back into her bag. “We don’t have to talk about it.”

Shepard wipes at her eyes with the back of her hand. “I’m…I should go.” She stands up abruptly. “Thanks for the coffee, Liara. Really.”

“Any time,” Liara says. She glances at the data pad in her bag. “…Shepard.”

*

She unscrews a bottle of whiskey.

_Not fucking fair_

She pours herself a shot. The glass was a gift from Joker; he made it a mission to give stupid shot glasses to the Commander after visiting somewhere new. Another gift meant for another woman.

_Why did they make me_

She knocks the shot back. It burns. She pours herself another.

_Why didn’t Maya let me die_

She downs the second shot.

_Why did she get a childhood and love and a life_

And a third.

_What makes her so damn special_

Fourth.

_I don’t understand_

Fifth.

_I don’t fucking understand-_

As the sixth shot goes down (with significantly less burning than the previous five), the door to her apartment opens. Garrus walks in. She drops the shot glass on the floor. Did he say he was coming over tonight? Shit, shit, _shit_. Shepard tries to go meet him, but her head is fuzzy and light. Her movements feel slow. 

Garrus looks at her and his mandibles flare in surprise. “What are you- why are you drunk?” 

She stumbles and grips the counter. “M’not. M’not that drunk, anyway, _shit_ \- were you supposed to come over tonight?”

Garrus walks over and grabs her elbow. “No. I wasn’t. But I needed to talk to you about something.” He leads her over to the couch and sits down beside her. The look in his eyes is deathly serious. “I’d expected to do this while you were sober. But...hey, maybe this will make it easier.”

Her heart sinks. “You’re breaking up with me.”

“Yes- no- shit, I don’t know,” Garrus says. He sighs in frustration, and he looks away. “Liara told me you two met up for coffee today.”

Did they? Wait, yeah, they did. Shit. “Yeah. Yeah we did. She showed me- she showed me pictures.”

“Of you,” he says. 

“Yeah.”

“Were they really of you?” He turns his eyes back towards her. His gaze is steely, piercing. And…a little sad.

“You know,” she says suddenly. It isn’t a question. It’s a realization. All at once it feels like the sky has shattered. It’s cracked and broken above her, and it’s only a matter of time before the shards start to rain down. 

“You can’t clone handprints.” he says. 

It takes her a minute to remember the data pad. 

“Or birthmarks,” he adds quietly, looking away again.

Her hand goes to her hip. She had barely noticed it. She hadn’t even thought…

“You’re not going to deny it?” Garrus says. He looks at her almost as though he’s begging her too. He wants to believe it’s her. He wants to believe she’s not gone. Seeing him hurting breaks her heart a little.

“I can be her,” she says, moving closer. She sets a hand on his shoulder. “I can. I already am. We’re the same. I fooled everyone, it’s like nothing’s changed-”

Garrus stands up and frowns at her. “Do you not understand how wrong that is? Is that actually what you want? To just- to just pretend to be someone you’re not for the rest of your life?” When she continues to look at him earnestly, he seems horrified. “Why? Why did you do this?”

“I just- it was my only chance,” she says. Her voice breaks. “It was my only chance to be her. To belong somewhere.” She looks up at him. “You don’t know what it’s like, walking in her fucking shadow! You don’t know what it’s like to not have anything- even fucking Maya abandoned me! She woke me up! She taught me everything!” The tears are coming freely now. “I wanted to die, but it wouldn’t let me…it wouldn’t let me.”

Garrus’s expression seems to soften slightly. But the sadness is evident on his face. He wants her to be the Commander. He’s been hoping, praying, trying to convince himself. “Look, I’m not going to deny you got the short end of the stick. But you tried to kill her. You’ve lied to us for a year-”

“I tried to kill her because Maya said that was the only way!” she screams, getting to her feet. “Imagine if someone pulled you from a pod and said ‘aliens are terrible and so is the real you, kill her and fix it!’ What are you going to say to that person? To the only friendly face you have?” She’s trembling all over. “Could you even fucking say no? What would she have done if I hadn’t been a good little clone?”

Garrus holds up his hands, trying to placate her. “Calm down.”

“No!” The tears are coming freely now. “It’s not my fault! _I DIDN’T ASK TO BE MADE_! I JUST WANTED TO LIVE!”

He sets a hand on her shoulder. It’s a gentle gesture, but not nearly as personal as she would like. She wants him to hug her, to wipe away her tears, to tell her it doesn’t matter that she’s a clone. Because he loves her for her. But how can he? How can anyone love her for who she really is, when she has no idea herself?

She lets out a sob. “Just let me be her…just let me keep pretending…”

“That’s not fair to you, and you know it,” Garrus says. “You deserve your own life. Your own life, with your own friends…with someone who loves _you_. Not someone you’re pretending to be.”

And there it is. What she’s always known, but has never wanted to hear. Garrus doesn’t love her. He loves the _real_ Shepard. It hurts all the same. She turns away from him and rushes for the door.

“Shep- hey! Where are you going!?” Garrus calls after her.

She doesn’t know. She just runs. Past people’s apartments, stumbling down stairways. Everything begins to blur together. She starts to feel sick. It feels like she has no control of what her own body is doing. Sobbing, she stumbles into an alley. Her head feels heavy. 

_Tired…_

As she lays down on the ground, she sees a Keeper scuttle around the corner. 

_So tired…_

The last thing she sees is a pair of insect-like black eyes.


	10. A Choice

She awakens surrounded by light.

Bright, impossibly bright. She squints. Her head is pounding, and she’s not sure where she is or how she got there. She sits up slowly. It takes her a moment to adjust to the light. The area is clinically clean. But not as though someone has taken great pains to maintain it. Instead it feels like no one has ever been here. There’s a large window with a view of the stars. She stands and glances around.

Her heart stops.

Standing at the other end of the room is a woman with short red hair and N7 armor. Her back is to the clone. Around her are at least fifteen different screens, each showing a quick-moving stream of unintelligible data. A Keeper scuttles up to her and seems to transfer some more information, then leaves as quickly as it came. She watches her for what feels like an eternity. 

“You’re alive,” she says, and her voice breaks.

“That depends on both your definition of alive and who you mean when you say ‘you’,” she says. And her voice is everywhere. It is both familiar and inexplicable.

_“No, you have yet to live.”_

Her eyes widen. “It was- _you_ were the voice. You were the one that brought me back!”

Commander Shepard turns around. “Yes. The Keepers had harvested your body to be turned into bio-fuel. But I believe you are more than spare parts.” She walks towards the clone. Her gaze is gentle. Almost…maternal. “You deserve far better than Commander Shepard’s shadow.”

“I…I don’t understand,” she says. She takes a step back. “H-How? Why haven’t you come back? All your friends- they miss you.”

A brief look of sadness passes over the Commander’s face. “I am not Commander Shepard. I was her, once.” She pauses. “Walk with me. I will explain.” And so she begins to walk. After a moment of hesitation, the clone follows. “The Crucible allowed Commander Shepard to speak with the Intelligence that created the Reapers; it offered her three new solutions to solving the problems between organic and synthetic life. One option was to control the Reapers.” 

She has never seen this part of the Citadel before. She doubts anyone even knows it exists. Most of it is just machinery. But one thing she sees alarms her. People. People _in tubes._ They look like a cross between husks and normal humans. And there's more. Banshees and marauders. Twisted abominations slowly turning back to their original forms. A couple of tubes hold people that vaguely resemble Javik; several contain aliens that she’s never seen the likes of before.

Commander Shepard stops to look at the tubes as well. “Commander Shepard took that option. In doing so she gave up her physical body, and I was formed from her consciousness. I know her every thought, her every memory. Her sacrifice drives me to protect and to heal. But I am not her.” She looks to the clone. “I am Guardian.”

“You’re…you’re a program?” This is all too much. She feels overwhelmed. 

“In a manner of speaking.” Commander Shepard – _Guardian_ – seems amused. “I am the Citadel. I am the Reapers. I am the relays. I am…everything. This form that you see is a hologram projected solely for your benefit.”

She slowly reaches out to touch Guardian’s shoulder. Her fingers pass through the armor plating. “So…so the real Shepard is dead?”

“Commander Jane Shepard is gone, yes,” Guardian says. Her voice is tinged with sadness. “But she lives on through me; I will carry on. Her sacrifices will not be forgotten.” She gestures to the people within the tubes. “I am undoing the Intelligence’s work. Reversing the process of indoctrination.” She pauses. “And of the harvest itself.”

Slowly she walks towards one of the tanks. “I don’t understand.”

“The harvest was successfully conducted 157,708,899 times.” Guardian says. “Can you fathom how many lives were lost? How many civilizations were wiped out?” She crosses her arms as she stares at one of the Javik-looking people in the tubes. “Do they not also deserve a second chance? Does their culture not deserve some route by which it can survive?”

“I…don’t know,” she says. “I…I don’t understand any of this! Why did you help me? Why didn’t you let me stay dead?” 

Guardian smiles slightly. “I have already said I am fond of second chances.” She turns to the clone. “Cerberus made you, and they used you. Maya awakened you, and she abandoned you. You did not ask for this life. But no one ever does.” The look she gives her is once again strangely maternal. “You are alive, and you deserve to live.”

“How?” Her voice sounds so small, so broken. “How can I be anything but her clone?”

“By making yourself into more,” Guardian says. “I have been helping you along, hoping you would reach this conclusion yourself.” She smiles slightly. “But I realize now that the direct approach might have been wiser.” 

She turns away from Guardian. “You don’t get it, do you? I don’t know how to be anything else. I don’t even have my own name!”

“Then find one,” Guardian says. “Create your own person. There is no one standing in your way now.”

“Like it’s that simple,” she says. 

“It can be,” Guardian says. “But you are not alone.” 

“But I am,” she says.

“So long as I exist, you are never alone,” she says. “I have watched you for some time. You are no worse than any other person on this Citadel. You want to belong. You want to be loved. That’s normal; and there is no reason you should not be able to find those things.” Guardian walks forward, and the clone follows after her. “But I cannot choose for you. Your destiny is your own.”

The thought is both liberating and terrifying. On one hand, Guardian is right. What is stopping her? She’s never considered just…going out. Starting her life. Doing whatever she wanted. The only thing holding her back is her face. But faces can be changed; she’s seen the vids. All she needs is enough credits and a doctor who will keep quiet. 

But on the other hand, the galaxy is huge. Terrifyingly, incomprehensibly huge. She could get lost in that so easily. Lost, forgotten, never to find her place…

“What would she have done?” she asks quietly.

“It does not matter,” Guardian says. “Because you are not her.”

She looks towards the tubes, filled with people who just might get a second chance at life thanks to Guardian. They would all be given a choice, just as she was given now. A chance to slink back into the shadows, back where they could hide and be safe. Or they could step into the light, bear the world’s scrutiny, and live.

“Have you made your decision?” Guardian asks.

She pauses.

“I have.”

*

She chances going back to the apartment one last time. Thankfully, no one is there. So she runs up the stairs and begins packing a bag. She throws in the clothes she likes best, along with some toiletries. She’ll need food, so she raids the kitchen and throws in some snacks. She empties Shepard’s bank account and loads all the credits on to her omni-tool. 

_The last thing I’ll take from her._

Then it’s all a matter of saying goodbye. She sits down on the couch and starts recording. And she explains. She explains that she is not Shepard. She never had amnesia. She never meant to hurt anyone. She only wanted a chance to live. But now she realizes that if she’s going to live, it has to be out from under Shepard’s shadow. She does not explain Guardian, or Shepard’s true fate. No one would believe her, anyway. 

“Don’t try to follow me, please,” she says. “Just forget about me.”

She sends it to them, all of them, and then she’s gone.


	11. Five Years Later

The Daybreak is a giant hunk of shit. Well, perhaps ‘giant’ isn’t the word for it. She can barely hold her crew of nine; they all practically live on top of each other. But Mags chose this life; and she’s happy with it. 

That’s what she likes to tell herself, anyway. Right now it doesn’t seem all that glamorous. She’s kneeling underneath the ship, passing Ketu tools when he needs them. So far she’s hit her head on the underside of the ship (twice), dropped a tool box on her foot, and she’s been splashed with fuel. All in the name of helping keep the Daybreak from flying apart on their next relay jump.

“You know sometimes I think you were the ones who got the worse end of the deal,” Ketu says. He’s got some sort of panel open, and is busy adjusting things with some kind of glowing tool. “This ship isn’t exactly what I’d call a prize.”

“Don’t insult her,” Mags says, handing him another tool when he holds out his hand. 

The drell glances over at her with a smirk. “You were just calling it a piece of shit this morning!”

“I’m one of the owners,” Mags says matter-of-factly. “She’s a piece of shit, but she’s _my_ piece of shit.”

“How’s it coming?” A pair of boots appear beside the ship. Mags crawls out from underneath the Daybreak, wiping some of the filth off on her pants. A quarian stands in front of her with one hand on her hip. Mags knows Raela is impatient to be off; they have a job out in the Terminus Systems that they need to hop on. “Will we be able to leave soon?”

“Define ‘soon’!” Ketu calls out from underneath the ship.

“Soon; adverb. Definition: in or after a short time; alternatively, used to indicate one’s preference in a matter,” says a synthetic voice, seemingly from nowhere. Raela looks visibly exasperated. She taps her suit.

“That’s not what he meant, Tick, and you know it,” Raela says.

“Apologies, Creator Raela,” it replies. “And to answer your question, at Ketu’s current rate, he will have the ship back to 84% functionality within an hour and a half-”

“That’s a number I can live with,” Raela says, shrugging. “The others should be back soon- knowing Nyx they bought the entire market.” 

As if on cue a krogan enters the dock and walks towards them. He carries a large metal crate of supplies on one shoulder and five bags of God knows what in his other hand. He’s followed by two humans carrying even more supplies. The krogan drops the crate beside the ship and looks at the others. 

“We about ready?” Trendok asks. 

“It’ll be another two hours,” Raela replies, setting a hand on her hip. 

“Where’s Nyx?” Mags asks. 

“She went to go find the twins,” Kelvin replies with a shrug. He looks toward the other human, whose face is hidden by a mask. “Dante was going to go with her, but someone started giving him shit about keeping his face covered.” He pauses. “Then they asked ‘what are you, a suit rat?’ and he punched him.”

“Good man,” Raela says, smirking. She glances towards Mags. “I’m so glad we took him on.”

From there it’s just a matter of loading the Daybreak. They have a couple month’s worth of supplies; it means they won’t have to dock for a while. It also means that their resources are almost drained. The Crimson Novas generally live from job to job. Scraping by. But it’s not about money. It never has been. 

As they finish loading the ship, an asari and two identical turian women approach the ship with even more supplies. Mostly dextro food; Avinaria, Novitana, and Raela have to eat, too. 

“Are we almost ready to leave?” Nyx asks, looking towards the others. 

“Gimme another thirty minutes!” Ketu yells from underneath the ship.

“Negative; it will be another fifty-two minutes at minimum,” Tick says. 

“Wanna bet?” Ketu pokes his head out from under the Daybreak.

“Negative; you are without proper funds,” Tick replies. 

“Hey!” 

“It’s not wrong, babe,” Mags says, fighting a smile. She leans against the ship and ignores the betrayed look Ketu is shooting her. He disappears back underneath the Daybreak, grumbling under his breath. She stands and watches Trendok and Dante load up the last few crates of dextro food. Everyone else is happily going about their business. Raela has vanished on to the ship, probably to make sure everything else is ready for their departure. There’s chatter and people running back and forth. It’s a familiar, comforting sort of chaos. Mags smiles to herself as she watches them. 

Then she notices the asari.

Mags recognizes her immediately. She wants to run, to hide, to leave, but she knows that she’s already seen her. So she stands there, frozen, her arms crossed over her chest. 

The others notice her too. The activity pauses. No doubt they all recognize her. Dr. Liara T’soni is something of a celebrity these days. All eyes turn to Mags, silently asking what she wants them to do. But she ignores them. Ketu pokes his head out again to see the cause of the sudden silence. Upon seeing Liara, he scrambles out from under the Daybreak and goes to Mags’s side. He grabs her hand and squeezes it comfortingly. Liara approaches somewhat cautiously, glancing at all of the people watching her. 

“I told you not to follow me,” she says. 

“I know,” Liara says. She glances around at her crew. “A diverse group you have here.” She pauses, looking towards Mags. “I don’t mean you any harm. Any of you. I was just…curious.” 

Mags lets out a breath she didn’t realize she was holding. She glances at the others, who still have not moved. “It’s fine you guys.” She squeezes Ketu’s hand. “Really.”

They look at her skeptically for a moment, then slowly return to the tasks at hand. Ketu takes a bit longer. He looks at Mags with concern. She offers him a comforting smile and kisses his cheek. “Go on; you have a bet to win.”

He lets go of her hand reluctantly, and she motions for Liara to follow her. Once they are away from the docks, Mags doesn’t quite know what to say. She just stands there, digging her heel into the ground. Waiting. 

“You cover your tracks pretty well, I’ll give you that much,” Liara says finally. “It took me this long to get a solid lead on your location.” 

She bites back her annoyance. There was a damn good reason she’d been careful about covering her tracks. The news got out that ‘Commander Shepard’ was a hoax fairly quickly. In the firestorm that followed, people wanted the clone dragged back and arrested for impersonating their hero. Half of the credits she’d taken from Shepard’s account had been spent on bribes, trying to keep her surgeons on Ilium quiet. Even then, they blabbed. She ran to Omega- and that’s where she met Raela. 

Ever since she’s done all she can to hide her connection to Shepard. The doctors on Ilium managed to change her jawline a bit and her nose. She wears contacts to make her eyes look blue rather than green. She keeps her hair dyed black, and has found she prefers to keep one side of her head shaved short. Her plethora of tattoos also helps disguise who’s DNA she shares; people tend to focus on them rather than her face sometimes.

“I know why you ran,” Liara says suddenly. “We all do. We all understand.” 

That’s a relief, at least. She looks away. “I never meant to hurt anyone. I was just- I was just trying to do what I was meant to do. But I wasn’t meant for that.” A small smile comes to her face. “I’m more than just spare parts. I’m more than her replacement.”

“I’d hoped…” Liara glances away. “I…apologize for how things happened. I presumed your intentions were purely malicious. Our first encounter-”

Mags holds up a hand to stop her. “You had every reason to do what you did, Liara. It’s over, it’s done, it’s in the past. I don’t hold a grudge.”

“You seem to have done well for yourself, at least,” Liara comments. She smiles. “The Crimson Novas have crossed my desk a couple of times before. A diverse task force of mercenaries for hire with a strict moral code. You’ve done good work.”

“They’re my family,” Mags says, smiling slightly. 

“Do they all know…?” Liara asks. 

“Yeah.” She’d cried a lot after telling them. Not one of them – not a single one – had given a damn. And that meant the world to her. It still does. “We’ve all got nothing. Trendok lost his entire clan in the Reaper War. The twins lost their mother and most of the people in their unit. Nyx was on Thessia. Kelvin was on Earth. By the end of the war Raela only had Tick. Ketu never had much to begin with. Same with Dante.” The tears start to come, and she wipes at her eyes. “We all had nothing, but now we have something. We’ve got each other.”

Liara sets a hand on her shoulder. “I’m glad you’re doing alright. I’ll let the others know.” 

“How are they doing?” She stands there and listens as Liara lists off what everyone is up to. She’s pleased to hear that most of them are doing well. Even Garrus seems to be doing alright; she still feels a familiar pang of guilt whenever she hears his name mentioned, however. “Could you…tell him I’m sorry. I…I can’t imagine how bad it hurt him to realize she was really gone.”

“It was…definitely painful for him,” Liara admits. “And for you; he said you were very…attached to him.” 

There’s that guilt again. “I thought I loved him.”

“You thought?” Liara raises an eyebrow.

“I didn’t. I just- I saw how happy he and Shepard used to be. And I wanted that. I wanted somebody to love me the way he loved her,” she says. “I just wanted someone to care. And Garrus was…there.” It sounds so awful to say it aloud. But it’s the truth. She hadn’t loved him, not really. She certainly cares about him; he’s a good person. He made her laugh. But Mags knows what love is now. And it isn’t that. “I used him, and I’m sorry. Tell him that, will you? Tell him Mags is sorry.”

“Mags.” Liara repeats the name, the surprise evident in her voice. “I…of course. It was foolish of me to think-” She sighs. “Can we start over?”

“What do you mean?” Mags asks, frowning.

“I know Shepard would have cared about you. She tried to save you,” Liara says. There’s still a distinctive sadness in her voice whenever she speaks of her fallen friend. For a moment Mags considers telling her everything – that Shepard isn’t truly gone, that part of her is living on through Guardian – but she knows that Liara won’t believe her. Who the hell would? “She’d want you to be happy. And she’d want me to get to know you. As a person. Not as her clone.” She takes a deep breath. “So let’s just…start over.”

Mags raises an eyebrow. “You’re suggesting we…what? Be friends?”

“Why not?” Liara asks. 

The idea makes her slightly uncomfortable. She’s worked so hard to separate her life from Shepard’s. Striking up a friendship with Liara would mean that, once again, their lives would intersect. But…perhaps that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. She’s not just Shepard’s clone now. She’s Magdalene. Not Jane Shepard, not Shepard’s clone. Mags. Co-founder of the Crimson Novas and the owner of a piece of shit ship known as the Daybreak. And she wouldn’t have it any other way.

“I’d like that,” she says, smiling slightly. She holds out her hand. “I’m Magdalene. All my friends call me Mags, though.”

Liara smiles as well. “Liara T’soni.”

“Mags!” Raela appears from around the corner. “Mags, we’re ready to go.”

“I shouldn’t keep you,” Liara says. “I’ll be in touch.” She pauses and adds, “Mags.”

She nods and turns to go towards Raela. Then Mags pauses and glances back. “How did you find me, anyway?”

“I got an anonymous tip,” Liara says, shrugging. “From someone who only referred to themselves as Guardian.”

Mags bites back a smile. “Well. See you around, Liara.”

“See you around,” Liara says.

With that she and Raela start walking back towards the Daybreak. As soon as they’re out of earshot, Raela says, “Ok, what in the hell was that all about? What did she want?”

“She just wanted to clear the air,” Mags assures her. 

“That better be all she wants,” Raela says, glancing back over her shoulder. “I don’t want anyone giving you shit for whose DNA you share.”

Mags smiles slightly. As they approach the Daybreak, Ketu is waiting outside. He brightens up considerably when he sees her. “What’d she want?”

“Nothing, apparently,” Raela says. She goes to climb into the ship. “Come on, you two. We have shit to do.” 

Ketu grabs her hand, holding her back from going into the ship. “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine, Ketu,” Mags says, smiling slightly. She wraps her arms around him. They both smell like fuel and grime. But she doesn’t care. “She just wanted to clear the air, that’s all. I doubt she’s going to give me away.”

He sets his hands on her hips and kisses her. “Good.” Ketu smiles. “C’mon. Let’s get moving before Raela has a stroke.”

So they climb into the ship. As soon as they’re on board, the door closes behind them. Tick’s voice echoes through the Daybreak. “Preparing for launch. Destination: Sigurd’s Cradle. ETA is twelve hours. Number of predicted relay jumps: three.”

Mags heads to the cockpit and takes a seat beside Raela. The ship moves away from the dock and begins accelerating toward the relay. As they approach, her friend glances towards her. “Ready?”

“Ready,” Mags says. 

With a chuckle, Raela accelerates. And in the blink of an eye, they’re gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much to everyone who has supported this fic! I really enjoyed writing it, and I'm so glad so many of you enjoyed reading it! You guys are amazing!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The Adventures of Mags and Friends](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3974005) by [MsWikit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MsWikit/pseuds/MsWikit)




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